Christopher Talib

France is under a state of emergency since November 2015. Several laws and a more intrusive surveillance framework, infringing rights and freedoms, have been adopted these recent years in the name of the fight against terrorism.

Privacy, freedom of expression… these words could soon disappear from French vocabulary as the number of measures increases as the same time than their intensity. We will show how it happened and what are our actions to try to defend the rights of all to privacy and freedom of speech. The next French presidential elections will take place in spring 2017 under the state of emergency while all laws recently adopted are making our national motto „liberté, égalité, fraternité“ out of date. Furthermore, the increasing surveillance drifts are undermining Privacy whereas this is a fundamental right and a sine qua non condition for freedom. We are looking back on the three years span of law adopted on surveillance in France as well as the more than one-year old state of emegency. What does that mean for our rights ? What is at stake ? In which society model are we heading? What can we learn form the French experience? Let’s find out.

Other people: Agnes

After three years the EU has for the first time new Net Neutrality rules. What do they mean in practice? Which commercial practices by ISPs are allowed and which have to be punished by the telecom regulator. We give an overview about three years of campaign and where we go from here.

As part of the Savetheinternet.eu coalition, we fought hard over three years in all stages of the legislative and regulatory process to make the new Net Neutrality protections as strong as possible. We explain our tactics and goals for this campaign of 32 NGOs from 14 countries that managed to submit half a million comments to the European Regulators, BEREC. This talk focusess on the pracitcal implications of the new rules and which types of potential network discrimination are prohibited, disputed or allowed. We explain how enforcement is working in different countries and what you can do to put these new rules into practice and extinguish Net Neutrality violations by your ISP. A core component in this fight is the platform RespectMyNet.eu. Users can submit Net Neutrality violations on this website and thereby give them visibility and allow others to confirm, discuss and act upon them. As BEREC guidelines will be regurlaly reviewed this tool is of utmost importance to track the implementation of Net Neutrality rules as well as commercial practices by ISPs and mobile operators. RespectMyNet lived different lives, one of our current tasks is to make the tool and the submissions fit the new BEREC Guidelines in order to provide an easy to use and efficient tool for net neutrality activists in Europe. Let's protect the Internet as an open, free and neutral platform with the new rules the EU has given us.

Other people: Thomas Lohninger